Aram Zucker-Scharff

Millennials speak up on rejecting credit: Jobs are scarce. Pay is low. School debt is high.:

Readers chime in as to why young people are avoiding credit cards.

It frustrates me that the coverage of this recent report is totally ahistoric. Pre-2006 it didn’t matter that you didn’t have a job and had a loan, credit card companies were signing students on campuses up left and right. That they aren’t anymore and that individuals don’t feel the need to get a card, isn’t a story of some victory over economic expectations, a failure to grow, or unemployment. 

This is a story about the mistakes of the previous generation, what an overage of credit did before and could do again; why the underlying economic shift away from personal debt is incredibly depressing and dangerous for consumers and the middle class.

Credit cards and credit card companies are AWFUL. But the lack of availability of credit to individuals compared with significant outlays of credit to banks and large corporate entities (and the inflation that accompanies it) is THE story. 

It’s the story of our ongoing tailspin into complete economic inequality and one that tells us about a dark future for Millennials that has nothing to do with carrying balances or avoiding debt and EVERYTHING to do with our increasing inability to access the means by which wealth is created. 

Millennials aren’t using credit cards, and it might come back to haunt them:

A new study finds Millennials are ditching plastic. That might hurt them in the future.

Being responsible with your debt isn’t going to help you get a good credit history. Welcome to a system designed to force you into significant levels of potential debt in order to go into further debt. All this to abdicate responsibility of your personal information to faceless sketchy credit and credit rating companies for a house or a car that is more likely to lose value than gain it by the end of your life time. 

Our parents bought into a system in which credit card use and taking on high debt loads were qualifiers for loans and positive background checks. Now when Millennials opt-out of a system designed to provide approval for what is essentially wage-slavery they find they are unqualified to gain credit because they’ve been more fiscally responsible then the last two generations. 

Millennials: screwed either way. 

The Bloody Waters of Higher Ed:

Notes on how a generation’s class- and age-based neglect destroyed the job prospects of rising Millennials: Academia edition.

Or: How the tenure track has eliminated itself. 

“One in five people in their 20s and early 30s is currently living with his or her parents. And 60 percent of all young adults receive financial support from them. That’s a significant increase from a generation ago, when only one in 10 young adults moved back home and few received financial support.”

– It’s official: the boomerang kids won’t leave.